End-of-year

If you haven't done so already run out and get a copy of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Or download it on your Kindle or iPad. It is a great book. I won't give anything away, only one review started with "just a few times in a decade does a book as good as The Gold Finch come along." There is an exhibit at The Frick Museum where the actual painting is being shown that I hope to see.

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The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius

Today is the day to start with the new year's resolutions. Mine are (so far): eat more fruit and read more books. Actually, I eat a lot of fruit already but I have a new book: The Tao of Nutrition that is fascinating. It explains how different foods work with your body (in a nutshell).

As far as books are concerned I am off to a roaring start with The Goldfinch. I also recently finished The Ghosts of Guilt by Michael Connolly. I love his detective stories and he is quite funny.

Seeing that I spent the entire fall with a glue gun in hand decorating Christmas trees, large and small, for various charities now is the time for me.

Trees for tables at soup kitchen Part of the Solution

I do have a mound of tax work to do which will take quite some time. Turbo Tax is so helpful. A new thing I found this year is there is a table that shows what the value of your household donations should be. They have compiled this list based on prices at Goodwill and other thrift stores as well as eBay. For a blazer it is such and such, for a dining room table $148. It goes on down the line, sheets, stockpot, etc. The prices are low and realistic. Don't want those IRS guys coming to the door.

Ignore the weather outside and settle in with a good book.

JIT

Just in time. Here is someone who waited a little too long to tackle her Christmas shopping although it looks as though she got it all done at one fabulous store.

Christmas

The weather outside is indeed frightful and inside it is truly delightful. I hope you've finished your shopping so that you can now savor the holiday.

This is a nice look if you're in a warm climate.

Santa will be heading out shortly ...

Okay, if your house doesn't look somewhat like this then you are in trouble. You knew Christmas was coming, it's on the 25th of December every year and, no, it is not a week earlier this year, there was just a shorter time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We even have the Internet now, making shopping virtually effortless. Now is the time to vow that you will never let Christmas catch you by surprise again, haha. And, no, January is Not Too Early to make needlepoint Christmas ornaments for next year. Make a list of things you wish you had thought of or want to do next year.

Enjoy your time at Christmas and be grateful for everyone you have in your life.

Favorite Christmas carol, or rather the one I have the lyrics for.

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth,

To touch their harps of gold:

"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,

From heaven's all-gracious King."

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,

With peaceful wings unfurled,

And still their heavenly music floats

O'er all the weary world;

Above its sad and lowly plains,

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever o'er its Babel sounds

The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love-song which they bring;

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now! for glad and golden hours

come swiftly on the wing.

O rest beside the weary road,

And hear the angels sing!

For lo!, the days are hastening on,

By prophet bards foretold,

When with the ever-circling years

Comes round the age of gold

When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing.

Not everything has to be red and green. There is always a spot for some pink!

Helping out

'Tis the season and some of you are probably fed up with the whole thing. I, for one, love Christmas and love the decorations that go along with it. However, I may have hit my limit this year, making 40 miniature trees for Ronald McDonald House Charities and some for my favorite soup kitchen, POTS. 

I've been doing some volunteer work at POTS (Part of the Solution) in the Bronx this year (check it out on Google) and all I can say is you get out of it what you put into it. It has been a very rewarding experience and I feel I am helping people who are in need, from me to them, with no middle man. If I bring in a coat I know one of these folks will be wearing it within the week. I wash the dishes from which they eat their meals. (Trying not to end these sentences with a preposition …)

I have to be careful because I have become so passionate about this cause and I don't want to come across as a born-again Christian. But, more on that. It amazes me that, in general, these folks have faith in God. I do not know how, given their circumstances, but often the blackboard posted on the wall often has something biblical on it and always something inspirational. My thought is to put up "Peace on Earth, good will toward men". In my mind that summarizes it all.

www.potsbronx.org

So pretty.

I want to make an ornament like this for next year. I love the snowman!

It's a bit too brisk outside for my taste

The weather has finally turned to November weather, as opposed to the Indian Summer we enjoyed for most of October. The old rule still applies: get out in the fresh air and exercise because you rarely feel worse after exercise and quite often feel better. Sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish but it's true.

In an effort to cut down on Weight Watchers points (essentially calories) I had been excluding milk from my coffee. And it made mornings not as pleasant as they should be.  It's funny, I saw this ad for "Got Milk" and it was some cool football player or superstar basketball player and it said "Got Milk: Protein". It really hit home because, duh, I had discounted the protein factor and protein is quite a boost in the morning. Sometimes you have to rethink the counting calories philosophy.

I've been working feverishly on craft projects for the Boutique at Ronald McDonald House Trees of Hope event in New Haven. I've got the glue gun out, faux Christmas trees and ornaments I've picked up in my travels (sounds dramatic but my travels are limited to my zip code only). Lots of mess and lots of fun.

I've also been making some home-made Christmas presents. I can't reveal what they are but I'm pleased with how they turned out.

Here are some pictures of trees we have decorated for past Trees of Hope:

Bird tree

Healthy living tree

Italian tree

Travel tree

What did I say? Dahlias!

Just a few posts ago I was trying to think of wonderful things to enjoy after Labor Day and one of those things was dahlias. Well, don't you know I went to a beautiful family wedding and there were dahlias galore. Just beautiful.

Dahlias!

And hydrangeas!

It's not so bad after all

Yesterday when I woke up I said to myself now this is Exactly the kind of day one expects the day after Labor Day: cool, Gray and depressing. However, I went to work in the city and when I got in my car to come home I was absolutely delighted to feel the warmth of the sun. It felt just like September sun feels: warm and wonderful. (Gee whiz, two colons in one paragraph. Hope I got it right.) So all of that grim anticipation of life after summer went right out the window. It was absolutely glorious.

I tend to make resolutions this time of year. One is to make lists of things I have to do. I was a big keeper of to-do lists at one point and I don't know why that habit went by the wayside but it did. With a list I feel less overwhelmed.

Here's to a beautiful, organized fall!

I need to start reading more; how about you?

Dahlias and Zinnias

Somehow Labor Day has arrived all too quickly. There's nothing to be done about it but I do wish summer was about a month longer.

I am always grateful for the segue that the US Open (tennis) provides. It eases the pain of not being at the beach. And if the Yankees go to the World Series (one can always hope) then you've gotten yourself to October.

The flowers in your garden are on the wane but this is the perfect season for dahlias so enjoy those. (remind yourself to plant these next year!) The zinnias are wonderful as well. 

Modern Times

I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to surfing the internet. I know way too much about the royal families and Pinterest is absolutely addicting. However, looking at lifestyles one will never live and things one will never need could be regarded as wasting time.

Here are some things we used to do in the Olden Days. It's far from complete but it's what I remember for now:

We read MAD Magazine. (Now, there's another complete waste of time.)

We read Highlights when we went to the dentist.

We played Barbie.

Us girls played with our dollhouses.

We played cards when the neighbor's grandkids came to visit. I think we played Hearts a lot. We played Monopoly too.

We played Crazy Eights on the front porch of the club. We played solitaire and double solitaire ( I regard this as a nerve-wracking pastime.)

The boys played Stratego all the time. And we got a kick out of watching them.

We did watch TV occasionally: Mickey Mouse Club, Superman.

And, at a young age I began to do needlepoint and have stuck with it.

We read a book every night for a half hour before we went to sleep.

Books?? Yes. Get yourself a Kindle as soon as you can.

Checking in

So here I am again in the land of Google. Something weird was happening when I plugged my iPad into my laptop and it was deleting all of my emails. So, in true only-I-would-do-this-fashion, I canceled Google. I didn't realize it would take away my blog but it did. Now I am back but with a different password so we'll see how long that lasts.

I now use iCloud for my emails. While I thought the iCloud servers would be well positioned to be located in abandoned missile silos in the middle of nowhere apparently the folks at Apple thought North Carolina is a better place. Any way you slice it your stuff is all out there in cyber space. But you would have to be truly bored if you had to resort to reading my emails. 

No bike riding lately. Per usual I am on the DL with a pulled something.

I lost my wallet (no surprise) and had to resort to this before going out today.

Hot, hot, hot

It's hot outside. Try to find some relief whether it is in air conditioning or in a pool.

Now, don't you feel cooler just looking at this picture?

This is a good thing to do on a day like today.

If you live in the city you can escape to a place like this.

When the temperature rises

I know, I know, it's hot outside. The key to the heat is to get yourself invited someplace cool. You could arrive in one of these:

 And relax in one of these:

And, when you get there, do what this fellow is doing:

June

I love June because we're enjoying the last of the peonies and the roses are in full bloom. You can smell them as you walk by. Honeysuckle, which has a lovely scent, is also blooming in a couple of spots on my bicycle route.

I love that the summer is stretched out before us and we have many, many beach days ahead.

Ready to burst into bloom

Pink

How can looking at pink not make you happy? It just lifts the spirits, doesn't it?

Falling into place

Surrounded by all of my treasures.

Pictures that were in different places are grouped together now for a cheerful effect.

Trying to get another house in order as well.

Aah, yes, I have come out the other end of the moving tunnel and am feeling settled. Moving was an experience best forgotten but now I look around and have all of my favorite things within arms' reach.

Out from under

This is someone else's front hall now.

We'll need to eat on laps now ...

Sometimes you just have to change it up a little. Get a fresh start, someplace your very own. That's what I've done. We sure enjoyed many fun dinners at this table but times have changed and it's time for something new. Relationships change and we move on.

If I ever get settled there'll be fun pix to see. It could be a while though ...